


Collusion

by BetweenTownleys



Category: Bully: Scholarship Edition
Genre: F/M, Gary gets amnesia, M/M, Post-Game, everyone will suffer, smopkins
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-30
Updated: 2014-08-30
Packaged: 2018-02-15 11:35:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2227554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BetweenTownleys/pseuds/BetweenTownleys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That was probably the nexus point. The reason Gary was here, and not deposited in some flea-bitten tenement, out of sight out of mind. It was the only thread they had in common.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Collusion

The situation was escalating quickly. Actually, that was an understatement. Things were going from bad to _absolutely_ _fucking terrifying_.

"Woah! Jesus _Christ_ , what the hell am I supposed to-? Hey! _Hey_ , can you hear me?"

How could one person bleed so much?? How could blood get everywhereso FAST? It didn't seem possible. This was a cartoon, right? It had to be. Nobody bled like this for real.

Jimmy Hopkins clutched the bleeding boy's head between his thick palms, red leaking uncontrollably from between his stiff fingers as he brought the sticky face close to his own. Eye contact was tantamount in this situation. Even a _complete_ _moron_ knew that much. It was about keeping his attention… Right? … _Right_? So he didn't, you know, _pass out_?? But, when had James _actually_ been prepared for a moment like this in his life, in class or otherwise? For something this scary to happen? Sure, he'd slammed his share of skulls into hard things over the years, but this time it was different. This timing was different.THIS GUY, was different. It was personal. Maybe, on second thought, _too_ personal. James tilted the face up towards his own, attempting to force the blurry brown eyes to meet his. It was the only thing the meaty teenager knew how to do. It was the only thing he _could_ do.

The pupils across from his own dilated in strange patterns. Lingering on that, Jimmy concluded that a concussion was likely the least of their problems. First and foremost, the amount of blood present was enough to convince someone a virgin had been recently sacrificed in the alley. It hit the pavement in fat drops. It thunked against the toes of his thick leather boots. He felt it in a hot trickle, moving down his arms. … _too much blood_ , the thought returned, nauseatingly. Jimmy obviously was not a doctor, but this seemed like _an awful lot_ of blood. He had seen a lot of blood before, but, this was a LOT of blood.

"What's your _problem_??" He spat the shaky words out, anxiety palpable in his voice. "Why are you MY problem? Huh??? What the hell are you trying to do to me? Is this a setup? I swear to God, I'll _murder_ you if you die right now!" The king shouted the last line, panic and anger intermingling. His grip tightened on the skull in his hands, as his knee came down sharply into dirt and the pieces of broken ceramic pottery which littered the alley around them, behind the boy's dormitory.

"Look at me. What the hell WAS that? Are you alright? _Look at me._ Gary!!"

Gary Smith swayed dangerously between Jimmy's palms. He was kneeling. His knees were a torn mess in addition to the enormous gash across the top of his skull, a symptom of when he'd gone down after the initial blow to the head. And yet Jimmy was frustrated to see that, despite _everything_ , Gary's nasty attitude still _lingered_ , like an unpleasant aroma you can't air out of a room.

"...YOU.... _did this_..." The words dribbled out, fragmented and nauseous, and yet somehow _still_ dripping with venom.

One sticky hand wove unsteadily up to slap across Jimmy's face. However his attempt to push the other boy away, jaw-first, ended somewhat lamely. All he could manage was a single boneless shove. Weak. _Pathetic_. He was blanched the color of a white sheet at high noon. The miracle seemed more to be that he hadn't vomited blood into his rival's face yet, before keeling over and passing out on the spot.

Jimmy's hands moved from Gary's skull to his shoulders when the taller boy suddenly slumped, bolstering the new weight more across his arms. "Are you crazy?? HOW is this my fault? I'm not the one who threw a goddamn potted plant at your stupid head, you _asshole_! I mean I've thought about it a _bunch_ of times, but, _damn_ , isn't throwing you once through a skylight already enough??"

Pieces of fragmented ceramic haloed them, echoing another scene from another night… The night when it had been broken glass on a fine oriental rug.

A cruel laugh burbled thickly up from Gary's throat as his eyes went out of focus. "... _James_... _Die_..."

 "Woah woah _woah_ , don't you pass out on me, what the hell am I supposed to do with you?? How did you _even get on campus_ , you sick psychopath? Where did you come from? I don't believe this shit, Gary, is this supposed to be a trick? If it is, then it's _fucking stupid_. What am I supposed to-? Hey!? HEY!"

Beneath his fingers, Jimmy felt Gary's muscles go limp. It was the only warning he had before the bloody teenager pitched forward and the king was forced to catch him roughly against his side.

It was winter, and as James hefted the unconscious body of his greatest rival over one thick shoulder, the icy ground smeared red beneath his sneakers.

 

White clouds of steaming breath filled the suddenly silent alley.

Jimmy ponderously searched the horizon once, more stunned than anything. Class was in-session, and all around them, the school campus laid in frosty silence.

"...What am I supposed to do now?" He demanded of the empty air, his voice as bewildered as his face.

High above them on the dormitory's roof, a familiar head of brown hair pulled away from the ledge in silence.

 

\------------------------------------------------------

 

 

"Well waddaya want _me_ to do with him, put him in a stew?"

Was that a joke? Was she… was she making a joke?

James leaned stiffly against a greasy shelf and observed Edna's hulking form cut across the light coming in from the kitchen door. Sometimes it was hard to spot a joke as far as the lunch lady was concerned, considering she had once _actually_ served them roadkill. However now seemed like a bad time for jokes, all things considered. There was definitely one very pressing issue at hand. Or was it a pressing issue _at foot_? The king looked down with a grimace.

Gary laid on the ground between them, propped bonelessly against a lumpy stack of empty potato sacks. Pantry moths flittered in a jittery halo around his sticky face. He was out cold. The bleeding had stopped sometime during the desperate piece of ninja genius that it had taken to smuggle his bloody body past the patrolling prefects and into the cafeteria. Upon further inspection, he also appeared to not have _fucking died_ on the way. A minor miracle, in Jimmy's opinion.That was (debatably) one good thing. And here, at least, a little blood didn't look too desperately untoward.

James watched the woman hover like a wet bag of flour over Gary's prostrate body. She sniffed him once, then gruffly kicked at his limp kneecap with one splattered sneaker.

"…um..? No? No, ma'am. I don't want to eat him, that's not what I meant." Jimmy folded his arms across his chest, a puff of frustrated breath sending his short bangs fluttering. "And he would probably taste like crap anyway, so it's just…I just, uh…" the words all of a sudden fumbled over themselves. "… what am I'm supposed to..? uh, I mean...."

What was he really trying to say here? That he needed some _adult guidance_?? Because, first of all, _hell no_. But all the same, words continued to elude him. James squinted angrily down at the floor. Had his mouth always felt this dry? Had his tongue always been so... what was that term? …oh yeah, completely _useless_?? No. Decidedly, it hadn't. But Gary Smith showing up unexpectedly had a way of gumming up the works that Jimmy hadn't entirely anticipated. You punch a shit-head enough times, you throw him off a building… You get that guy _arrested_?? That shit-head does NOT come back.

 _That_ situation? The one where Gary did a bunch of evil shit and Jimmy punched him a bunch of times then threw him through a window? Gary had insane troll logic, but things were still more or less relatively straightforward in that scenario. Punch him until he can’t get up. Check, ok. James understood that. (Or, at least enough to have _some sort_ of followup move.) But now, this…? What was his old nemesis even _doing_ here? And furthermore…

What _the hell_ was he supposed to do with the body of an unconscious, bloody Gary Smith?

Considering his options were limited, Jimmy had judged it best to consult the only adult he knew who understood how to keep a secret. And if there was any grownup on campus who knew how to gloss over possessing some unsavory contraband, boy was it Edna. The shit hidden away in the slimy crevices of this kitchen was truly the stuff of nightmares. Time and experience had revealed to him a secret or two more of Edna's than he'd ever cared to know about, and though at the moment she wasn't being the MOST helpful she could possibly be, it was still possible that they might be able to come to some sort of mutual understanding.

More than anything, Jimmy just kept back tracking to the same question. He was doing it now, even as he gnawed anxiously on his bottom lip and tried to keep himself as calm as he could possibly be after getting bled-out on by his own personal stalker-sociopath turned attempted-murderer. Gary was here. But, Gary had been _expelled_. So. _Why_ was Gary _here_? What the hell was James supposed to do in a situation like this?

Gary Smith on campus was like a school shooter returning to the scene of the crime. Having his _unconscious bloody body_ was… insurmountably worse. It looked heinously even more so for James, whose public vocalizations as ‘rival number one’ were known far and wide. How was it possible that this human contraband had landed again so resolutely in Jimmy's unwelcoming lap? Everything about it showed the earmarks of being a trap. Except for the laughably inconsequential detail of Gary Smith being on death's door. After all, not even psycho Gary would voluntarily try for a severe brain injury by way of getting pelted in the head with a pot from five stories up. The accident was already ridiculous enough. Like a cartoon piano falling out of the sky to crush Elmer Fudd. It just wasn’t Gary’s style.

All the same… Why the hell would Gary come back to Bullworth again, out of literally _all_ the places in the whole world he could have chosen to go instead after being expelled? Didn’t he still belong up the hill at the insane asylum? Or had his mommy and daddy bailed him out before he'd ever been required to set a single toe inside? Wasn't this asshole supposed to be rich or something? Nobody from the industrial park boxed like he did... like some pissed-off millionaire's son with something huge to prove.

And furthermore, maybe most importantly of all, which student with a vendetta had been the one to chuck that fucking pot at Gary's head in the first place? Somebody who hated Gary, obviously. Even a moron could follow that simple strand of logic. The weird part was, Gary's presence on campus hadn't yet been reported. Crabblesnitch would have hailed James to the headmaster's office over the crackling PA system an eternity ago if that had been the case. Who hated Gary, but also feared him?

James groaned internally, then after an angry pause, externally as well. God, what a useless question.

EVERYBODY hated and feared Gary Smith.

"Well if you don't wanna EAT him, then what the hell do you want from me, huh?" Edna's fat fingers wrapped briefly around Gary's unconscious jaw and she turned his face to the side, examining him as if she were inspecting a bloody slab of meat. "This kid's on the lamb so you better get rid of him quick! That is, if you know what's good for ya. Not to mention he ain't lookin too fresh..."

 _'No shit'_ was the obvious answer to that. What the hell did she _think_ he wanted? Instead, the young king's chin turned in to mumble into his shoulder, "...Yeah, what's _good_ for me is some fresh vegetables."

"What was that?"

Jimmy's hands shot up into the air in a sudden gesture of frustration. "I SAID, what am I _supposed to do_ with him? He's bleeding like a cow, how is this _my_ problem? He just shows up out of nowhere while I'm trying to get to class, blabbering about some PLANS or something..? And then some wise guy smashes him in the head with a potted plant and now for some reason I gotta deal with him? Me? I mean, Jesus, _me_? "

The lunch lady's hand shoved Gary's slack face away from her, his cheek grinding instead into a mealy canvas bag. Edna stood straight again and wiped the blood on her hand across the front of her dress. It left a clearly defined streak.

" This little shit is a _long way_ from home, I’ll tell ya. And that's the truth! So what's yer problem? Trust me, kid, it's all just one big disaster from here on out… Just call a prefect, why doncha? Dump him!"

The concept was obvious, and yet it struck Jimmy with a stupidly strong force for the _first time_ even as she said it. HOW had he not considered that already?? Edna laughed at the gobsmacked look on his face, and James let his arms fall uselessly to his sides as his eyes zigzagged between the unconscious teen on the floor and Edna's quirked eyebrow. Could he... _do that_? Could he just leave Gary trussed up like a pig in front of the teacher's lounge? It was a funny thought, and for a second James also entertained the idea of simultaneously stacking bags of dog shit on top of Gary's immobile figure as an added bonus for whoever discovered him first.

But just as the idea came, it went again. A skeptical look washed the stupid off of Jimmy's face, and he resolutely re-folded his arms back across his thick chest. No. No matter how much he hated Gary, turning him over to the adults would make James something worse. It would make him a snitch. And the king knew what happened to snitches, considering he regularly doled out that justice personally. Morally, turning Gary in was not an option, now that it seemed like he indeed was not actually going to just fucking die right there in the dirty kitchen. And James was nothing if not morally righteous at his core. James had treaties in place all around campus, but NOT with school staff. The adults around here, questionably sans Edna, were generally good for about two things; Number One: Kicking you. Or Number Two: Getting you _kicked out_. Whatever was happening now, it would regrettably have to stay within the confines of the student body.

…And with that realization came a secondary understanding; the hospital was also out of the question. What was Jimmy gonna do, peddle Gary through 15 miles of cops thrown over a bike basket? Forget that, because he had no doubt that he would be arrested immediately. Or, scratch that, first James would be beaten, then arrested, _then_ sent to juvy, THEN sued by Smith Industries. And then probably disowned by his absentee monster of a mother for good measure, because that was just how his luck ran. That plan was a dead end.

Edna shifted impatiently at his dumb silence. “…Look, I don't have time for this, kid! I’ve got an egg salad to scrape up for lunch.”

"Huh? No! Hey, but what if I-?"

“NO TIME, KID- …Unless…?" a light splashed across Edna's greasy face. "Yer willing to do old Edna a favor or two yourself? You know, you scratch _my_ back, I'll scratch yo-“

" _Woah, woah_!, yeah, I get it!” Revulsion prompted Jimmy to stop Edna short with a hand, and his grimace deepened as he looked between the greedy adult and the bleeding body at their feet. "Look, ma'am, I'm no tattle-tale."

"Way I look at it, thats _your_ problem, not mine. We gotta deal?"

God. Was he really about to make this bargain? Whoever was responsible for this would pay. He swore it, grinding his teeth together in a silent snarl.

"...Fine. Sure, _whatever_. You got it, just... right now? I need some help."

Edna stood pondering Jimmy for a moment, her fists resting on her wide hips, before she at last turned on her heel and lumbered off to rattle through a mealy metal pantry in a dark corner of the room. When she returned, a yellowing roll of dusty gauze was clutched in her hammy fist.

"You ever wrapped a christmas present, kid?"

 

\------------------------------------------------------

 

In a weird way, having Gary Smith asleep in his bed felt a lot like having one more trophy for his collection.

And by _weird_ … Jimmy meant, like, _really_ weird. (The kind of weird you _don’t talk about,_ not even with your best friends, but still constantly harp on and get awkward over in private.) It had been a strange day, across the board, but this was definitely the messed up cherry on top of the bullshit cake… bullshit James certainly hadn’t seen coming 24 hours ago. He sat on his desk across the room, his ass mashing up school papers and garbage alike under his bulky weight. He nervously shifted in place and cut loose a low, quiet sigh.

Jimmy ruminated. Maybe it was too messed up to think of Gary like a trophy, in this situation. Like he was some other piece of crap nailed to the wall representing one more stupid victory to boost Jimmy’s ego. After all, Gary had gotten what he deserved already, hadn’t he? Jimmy was all about justice being served, and Smith certainly had been doled his fair share of it. Though… actually, after closer examination, maybe _that_ wasn’t quite the right way to think about it either..?

…Gary had, actually, lost… _everything_.

It was a strange realization to make, especially post- riot murder attempt. Losing his position at school and the trust of literally any person he had ever met were the least of Gary’s concerns. There was a bigger problem. If the rumors were true, (and maybe they were, maybe they weren’t) Gary’s suspension had bought him a one way ticket straight to Happy Volts. It was a thing Jimmy didn’t feel comfortable thinking about, even now, despite how much hatred he still harbored for the psycho villain.

Jimmy had been to Happy Volts. _Several_ times. And he _knew_ what kind of a place it was. How run down it was, how filthy it was. How understaffed and overcrowded it was. He had even seen some disturbing x-rays with anatomy he couldn’t even _begin_ to figure out scattered throughout the facility. And juxtaposed with some other terrifying science bullshit there, it made him think that alien experimentation and sexual mutilation were some of their more normal practices. It wasn’t a place you got sent to when you had parents as rich as the Smiths. Even to an idiot, the rumor had an obvious endpoint; Gary Smith’s family had… _abandoned him_.

That was probably the nexus point. The reason Gary was here, and not deposited in some flea-bitten tenement, out of sight out of mind. It was the only thread they had in common. James sighed again, half a glare flickering across his face. Abandonment had been a constant looming threat while growing up in the Hopkins family. Subsequently, Gary’s situation had somehow been able to pull on Jimmy’s conscience. Actually, it had happened with surprising ease. Jimmy had been abandoned at _Bullworth_ , but he hadn’t yet been left in essentially what amounted to a glorified trashcan to die. Jimmy had been hidden out of sight, lived his life unacknowledged… but he hadn’t yet been _thrown out,_ like some piece of useless rubbish. Smith… decidedly… _had_. The redhead propped his sneakers up in the desk chair, and leaned heavily over onto his knees to stare down at the sleeping figure in front of him.

Gary looked better, if not still bad. Edna had been surprisingly helpful in the end, if one could indeed say that rehabilitating a traitorous sociopath was actually a thing anybody wanted to see happen. Her days as a terrifying lunch lady seemed to postdate her days as an even more terrifying nurse, and she had performed with bare adequacy all the tasks needed to pull Gary back from death via flowerpot. (There would be way more jokes about that, if only Jimmy could ever figure out how to stop being so shaken up.) Smith slept in perfect silence, his head wrapped in gauze the color of old newspaper. ( Edna quote _‘Wrapped up like a Christmas present nobody wants!’_ unquote.) In the grayish light of early evening, his skin took on an eerily pale shade. He was waxy. James narrowed his eyes at the way the other boy slept as if in a coma, bloodless and depleted, like he had been the recent victim of a vampire attack. It was hard to tell how much of it was from the accident, and how much was pre existing, though in the long run it seemed not to matter. A 16 year old boy with C+ level reading skills was not a doctor.

At the entrance there was a knock, and Jimmy jumped in his seat with sudden surprise. For a second, he breathed heavily through his nose to level out his jittery heartbeat, before standing up and firmly walking across the hardwood to his ~locked~ bedroom door.

“What do you want?” James stated loudly through the wood, resting thick fingers lightly on the handle.

“Jimmy, it’s me! Open up!”

Petey. James sucked a lip up between his teeth, knowing he would eventually need to deal with his best friend and any opinions he might have about this particular situation. (LOTS of opinions, Jimmy’s gut instinct told him dryly.) But a furtive glance over his shoulder made him second guess himself, and he stood in conflict until Petey knocked again, sounding confused.

“Jimmy, are you still there? C’mon, let me in!”

“Uh, I’m, uh… not… feeling too good right now, man. I’m… ‘real sick.”  

“…you are?” The doubt in Petey’s voice made Jimmy cringe. James was a horrible liar in any situation, much less to the person who supposedly knew him the best.

“Yeah. So, uh, you’re gonna have to come back later.”

“…do you need anything?” Concern replaced Petey’s doubt through the wood, the earmark of a true friend. “Like, I don’t know, some chicken soup or something?”

“No! Leave me alone, Pete. I’ll just, uh… I’ll talk to you tomorrow!”

James pressed an ear against his bedroom door and tried to discern the sound of Petey walking back down the hall. It was difficult to make out through the regular hallway chatter, threats, bribes, and screams echoing with perennial regularity. But there it was. After a minute of hesitance, Peter Kowalski turned on his tidy loafers and shuffled sadly back to his room.

Jimmy’s hands relaxed out of the clenched fists he hadn’t realized he had been making, and as he stepped back, he let loose one single, very very quiet, sigh of relief.

 

“You’re a terrible liar.”

No. _Not yet... God, please_...

 By the time Jimmy made a sharp, breathless turn, Gary had already pulled himself up into a sitting position. James stared in dumb surprise.

Ok, maybe ‘sitting’ was too bold a statement. Gary was more _sprawled_ than anything else. He laid half-propped up, with one leg thrown over the edge of the bed as if replicating an escape attempt, and a fine sheen of sweat beaded at his pale hairline. He seemed… flustered.

Jimmy took a step towards the bed. “And you’re a great liar. What’s your point?”

A humorless twitch pulled at Gary’s mouth for half a second, and another uncharacteristic detail struck Jimmy. He watched Gary first touch his bandage, then wrack a hand through his normally immaculately combed hair. It spilled over his fingers and settled in a chaotic flop to the right side of his scalp. It was a thoughtless gesture, followed up by a hollow scan of the room with sunken eyes. The ghostly expression swept finally down to himself, to his exposed knee, now bandaged to match his head. With drifting fingers, he touched his thigh, then the shirt he wore, a castoff from Jimmy’s closet.

“…What am I wearing?”

This was starting to get uncomfortably weird. James took another step forward, suspicion building a defense now where shock had been a minute ago. He folded thick arms across his chest, his school sweater pulling tightly across his shoulders. “I swear to God, Gary, if you make fun of my clothes after I saved your stupid ass from bleeding to death, I’ll throw you off the clock tower. You KNOW I can. And a _‘thank you’_ would be pretty nice right about now, too.”

Jimmy braced himself for the sarcastic comeback, looking expectantly at the face he hated more than his own parents. But it didn’t come. Nothing came, unless awkward silence could be considered an appropriate retort. (It wasn’t.)

the quiet stretched on.

“…What are you even doing here, man?” _‘The most obvious question award’_ , recipient James Hopkins. “How did you get back on campus? What are you trying to do? Because whatever it is, it won’t work. I’m _still the king_ , remember?”

With a sweaty hand, Gary brushed back his hair again, this time feeding the gesture with a stronger undercurrent of frustration. “…No.” He barked.

“No? What do you mean, ‘no’? Look, if you’re hungry for another beat down, you could have just asked!”

“…That’s not what I meant! I don’t _think_ that’s what I meant…”

What? Yeah right, Gary never said anything without having a purpose. The king stepped even closer, now feeling his hackles starting to rise.

“Well? What the hell _do_ you mean? You realize I’m the last person on the planet who wants to deal with your shit right now, Gary, right?”

“NO!” The sitting boy shouted a little louder, and Jimmy immediately felt himself exponentially pump up, full of anger, blood, testosterone… Was Gary really trying to start a fight? Now? _Now_???

“Stop saying no! What does that mean? Are you fucking with me? AGAIN??”

Gary’s face tensed, his eyebrows furrowing together in an angry line, even as he burned holes with his glare into the blanket across his lap. “WHY would I be fucking with you? No means no, OK?”

“Why… WHY _would you be fucking with me?_ ” The reply came out airless and disbelieving, like a bad joke. Jimmy barked one humorless laugh, and slammed a fist down on the bed frame by Gary’s feet.

“Really? Are you seriously trying to pull that on me, Gary? _Me_? Look, I’m not a total idiot, ok? YOU might think I am, but guess what? _I won_! I won and you LOST, so who’s the stupid one now? Huh?? So quit giving me this _bullshit_ and just tell me what you mean!”

“NO MEANS _I DON’T KNOW_ , YOU MONGALOID. NOW STOP SPILLING MACHISMO ON ME AND TAKE A STEP BACK BECAUSE I DON’T KNOW WHO YOU ARE AND I WANT TO LEAVE!”

 

The dead silence returned in full force.

 

Like falling under a magical ice curse, Jimmy’s whole body froze in looming position as Gary’s statement doubled back around. Wait, no, once wasn’t enough. _He doesn’t know who he is and he wants to leave_. Ok. Twice, three times, the thought rotated. Still nothing. Only dull misunderstanding… a reaction which painted the young king’s face with a kind of idiotic blankness.

Gary stared back in turn, his pale cheeks flush with anger. And yet there was something in the look which was wholly unlike the Gary of last year. It was a look which, for the first time, had absolutely no ulterior motive.

“…Gary, are you trying to trick me?”

“Oh, _genius observation_ , excellent!” Smith threw his hands up in frustration and looked away. “I’m _trying to trick you_. Into being convinced of… of… what, exactly? That I’m pretending I don’t know who I really am so I can stay here, _forever_ , in this _crusty_ bed in a room where an angry mushroom troll is standing guard? Does that sound fun to you?”

Confusion still clogged Jimmy’s faculties, and his retort got lost in the tangle. “…Wait, so, is the troll made out of mushrooms or… does the troll _eat_ mushrooms?”  

“Oh my god… you’re a _moron_!”

It was in that moment that suddenly the truth in Gary’s words hit resoundingly home. Jimmy blinked once, then twice, the knowledge settling in as Gary’s last words echoed back to him. Gary Smith, whose sole purpose in life felt at times like it was only to find creative ways to verbally tear Jimmy down, had just called him a moron like he had never used the word before in his life.

A thick finger jabbed out to point at his own now considerably paler face. “…Who do you think I _am_?”

The boy in the bed looked up through a fringe of sweaty bangs, his anger ebbing away in favor of vulnerable confusion. He gave a single restless shrug.

Jimmy stared, completely dumbfounded. It was a day for the history books.

 

Gary Smith had _no clue_ who he was.

 

 

 


End file.
